Trivia: Born in Georgia and raised in a black Long Island ghetto, Jim Brown distinguished himself in high school athletics. Recruited from Syracuse University, Brown was signed with the Cleveland Browns in 1957, remaining with that organization as star fullback for ten years. Breaking any number of NFL records, Brown was named Rookie of the Year in 1958 and Player of the Year in 1960; he played in every Pro Bowl game from 1958 through 1965, and in 1971 was elected to the Football Hall of Fame. While still with Cleveland, Brown made his film debut in the 1963 Western Rio Conchos, an event deemed worthy of a four-page color spread in Life magazine. He became a full-time actor upon his retirement from the NFL in 1967, co-starring that year in The Dirty Dozen. Though he had trepidation about the climactic scene in which he blew dozens of helpless Nazi officers and their sweethearts to bits with hand grenades, it was this uncompromising sequence that truly "socked" Brown over with the audience. He rapidly rose to leading roles in such actioners as Ice Station Zebra (1968) and 100 Rifles (1969); in the latter film, he stirred up controversy by sharing several steamy scenes with white actress Raquel Welch. Brown also headlined the above-average crime capers Kenner (1969) and Black Gunn (1972) as well as the ultraviolent Slaughter series. He cut down on his film appearances in the late '70s, devoting most of his time to his many civic activities and business concerns; during this period, he also founded the Black Economic Union. After several years' absence from the screen, Jim Brown co-starred with fellow blaxploitation icons Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree in the delightfully "retro" action-fest Original Gangstas (1996).

Trivia: Born into a show business family, George Kennedy made his stage debut at the age of two in a touring company of Bringing up Father. By the time he was seven, he was spinning records on a New York radio station. Kennedy' showbusiness inclinations were put aside when he developed a taste for the rigors of military life during World War II, and he wound up spending 16 years in the army. His military career ended and his acting career began when a back injury in the late 1950s inspired him to seek out another line of work.Appropriately enough, given his background, Kennedy first made his name with a role as a military advisor on the Sergeant Bilko TV series. In films from 1961, the burly, 6'4" actor usually played heavies, both figuratively and literally; quite often, as in Charade (1963) and Straitjacket (1964), his unsavory screen characters were bumped off sometime during the fourth reel. One of his friendlier roles was as a compassionate Union officer in Shenandoah (1965), an assignment he was to treasure because it gave him a chance to work with the one of his idols, Jimmy Stewart.Kennedy moved up to the big leagues with his Academy Award win for his portrayal of Dragline in Cool Hand Luke (1967). An above-the-title star from then on, Kennedy has been associated with many a box-office hit, notably all four Airport films. Unlike many major actors, he has displayed a willingness to spoof his established screen image, as demonstrated by his portrayal of Ed Hocken in the popular Naked Gun series. On TV, Kennedy has starred in the weekly series Sarge (1971) and The Blue Knight (1978), and was seen as President Warren G. Harding in the 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House. During the mid '90s, he became known as a persuasive commercial spokesman in a series of breath-freshener advertisements. In 1997, he provided the voice for L.B. Mammoth in the animated musical Cats Don't Dance, and the following year again displayed his vocal talents as one of the titular toys-gone-bad in Small Soldiers. Kennedy continued to steadily work through the next two decades; his final role was in The Gambler in 2014. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: Born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in Racine, WI, he aspired to a career in business as a young man, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in economics after serving in the First World War as an artillery lieutenant. He entered the banking business in New York in 1920, working at what was then known as First National City Bank (now Citibank), but while recovering from an attack of appendicitis, he decided to give up banking and to try for a career on the stage. March made his debut that same year in Deburau in Baltimore, and also began appearing as an extra in movies being shot in New York City. In 1926, while working in a stock company in Denver, he met an actress named Florence Eldridge. At the very end of that same year, March got his first Broadway leading role, in The Devil in the Cheese. March and Eldridge were married in 1927 and, in lieu of a honeymoon, the two joined the first national tour of the Theatre Guild. Over the next four decades, the two appeared together in numerous theatrical productions and several films. March came along as a leading man just as Hollywood was switching to sound and scrambling for stage actors. His work in a West Coast production of Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's satirical stage work The Royal Family in 1929, in which he parodied John Barrymore, got him a five-year contract with Paramount Pictures. March repeated the role to great acclaim (and his first Oscar nomination) in George Cukor's and Cyril Gardner's 1930 screen adaptation, entitled The Royal Family of Broadway. Over the next few years, March established himself as the top leading man in Hollywood, and in 1932, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), became the first (and only) performer ever to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a portrayal of a monster in a horror film. He excelled in movies such as Design for Living (1933), The Sign of the Cross (1932), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). He showed off his skills to immense advantage in a pair of color productions in 1937, A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred. In A Star Is Born, March was essentially reprising his Barrymore-based portrayal from The Royal Family of Broadway, but here he added more, most especially a sense of personal tragedy that made this film version of the story the most artistically successful of the four done to date. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award. In the screwball comedy Nothing Sacred, by contrast, March played a brash, slightly larcenous reporter who cons, and is conned by, Carole Lombard, and who ends up running a public relations scam on the entire country. He also did an unexpectedly bold, dashing turn as the pirate Jean Lafitte in Cecil B. DeMille's The Buccaneer (1939). In 1937, March was listed as the fifth highest paid individual in America, earning a half-million dollars. Unfortunately for his later reputation, A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, and The Buccaneer, along with his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Les Miserables, and Smilin' Through, were all the subjects of remakes in the 1940s and '50s that came to supplant the versions in which he had starred in distribution to television; most were out of circulation for decades. March moved between big studio productions and independent producers, with impressive results in Victory (1940), So Ends Our Night (1941), I Married a Witch (1942), The Adventures of Mark Twain, and Tomorrow the World (both 1944). March's performances were the best parts of many of these movies; he was a particularly haunting presence in So Ends Our Night, as an anti-Nazi German aristocrat being hounded across Europe by the Hitler government. Although well-liked by most of his peers, he did have some tempestuous moments off-screen. March didn't suffer fools easily, and had an especially hard time working with neophyte Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch. His relationship with Tallulah Bankhead, with whom he worked in The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942, was also best described in language that -- based on a 1973 interview -- was best left unprinted. In both cases, however, the respective productions were very successful. March's appeal as a romantic lead waned after the Second World War, with a generational change in the filmgoing audience. This seemed only to free March -- then nearing 50 -- to take on more challenging roles and films, starting with Samuel Goldwyn's production of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which he won his second Academy Award, playing a middle-aged World War II veteran coping with the changes in his family and the world that have taken place since he went off to war. His next movie, An Act of Murder (1948), was years ahead of its time, dealing with a judge who euthanizes his terminally ill wife rather than allow her to suffer. March was chosen to play Willy Loman in the 1951 screen adaptation of Death of a Salesman. The movie was critically acclaimed, and he got an Oscar nomination and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, but the film was too downbeat to attract an audience large enough to generate a profit, and it has since been withdrawn from distribution with the lapsing of the rights to the underlying play. He excelled in dramas such as Executive Suite (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955), The Desperate Hours (1955), and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), and in costume dramas like Alexander the Great (1956).During this post-World War II period, March achieved the highest honor of his Broadway career, winning Tony awards for his work in Years Ago (1947) and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956), the latter marking the peak of his stage work. March entered the 1960s with a brilliant performance as Matthew Garrison Brady, the dramatic stand-in for the historical William Jennings Bryan, in Stanley Kramer's Inherit the Wind, earning an award at the Berlin Film Festival, although he was denied an Oscar nomination. March's own favorite directors were William Wellman and William Wyler, but late in his career, he became a favorite of John Frankenheimer, a top member of a new generation of directors. (Frankenheimer was born the year that March did The Royal Family of Broadway in Hollywood.) In Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964), he turned in a superb performance as an ailing president of the United States who is forced to confront an attempted military coup, and easily held his own working with such younger, more dynamic screen actors as Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and veteran scene-stealers like George Macready and Edmond O'Brien. March was equally impressive in Martin Ritt's revisionist Western Hombre (1967), and was one of the best things in Ralph Nelson's racial drama Tick, Tick, Tick (1970), playing the elderly, frightened but well-meaning mayor of a small Southern town in a county that has just elected its first black sheriff. March intended to retire after that film, and surgery for prostate cancer only seemed to confirm the wisdom of that decision. In 1972, however, he was persuaded by Frankenheimer to come out of retirement for one more movie, The Iceman Cometh (1973), playing the role of Harry Hope. The 240-minute film proved to be the capstone of March's long and distinguished career, earning him one more round of glowing reviews. He died of cancer two years later, his acting legacy secure and undiminished across more than 60 movies made over a period of more than 40 years.

Trivia: Pencil-thin Canadian actress Lynn Carlin was Oscar-nominated for her very first film, the John Cassavetes-directed Faces. Ms. Carlin had some difficulty matching that early career peak in her subsequent roles, often taking pedestrian assignments; in one 1974 episode of Hawaii 5-0, she was killed off before the second commercial! The actress was better served with her top-billed portrayal of Buck Henry's "liberated" middle-aged wife in Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971). In 1977, Lynn Carlin was seen as the mother of mixed-up teenager Lance Kerwin on the critically praised TV series James at 15.

Trivia: African American actress Janet MacLachlan began appearing in films in 1968, usually in such "relevance"-oriented productions as Uptight (1968) and tick...tick...tick (1970). MacLachlan went on to co-star on TV as suburbanite Jackie Bruce in the weekly sitcom Love Thy Neighbor, then was seen in the 1979 TVer Friends as Mrs. Jane Summerfield. Her best-known TV role was as caustic housekeeper Polly Swanson in the 1980-81 episodes of Archie Bunker's Place. Janet MacLachlan's 1990s credits include character roles in the theatrical feature Hearts and Souls (1993) and the made-for-cable movie Tuskegee Airmen (1995).

Trivia: In the '70s, American actor Clifton James became the foremost film impersonator of Southern redneck sheriffs -- but he had to go to England to do it. A graduate of the Actors Studio, James secured small roles in such Manhattan-filmed productions as On the Waterfront (1954) and in well over 100 TV programs. But his parts were tiny and frequently unbilled, relegating James to the ranks of "Who is that?" character actors. All this changed when James was cast as Sheriff Pepper in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), which led to a reprise of the character in the next Bond epic The Man With the Golden Gun (1973). Since that time, the stocky, ruddy-cheeked James has been prominent in such films as Silver Streak (1976), The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) and Superman II (1980). In 1981, James was a regular on the brief TV sitcom Lewis and Clark. James kicked off the '90s as one of the willing but floundering cast members of that disaster of disasters, Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). He continued working in small roles through the rest of his life. James died in 2017, at age 96.

Trivia: Former pro football player Bernie Casey turned to acting in the early 1970s. He has been steadily employed in theatrical films ever since, playing supporting roles in such films as Boxcar Bertha (1972), Cleopatra Jones (1976), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), and all three Revenge of the Nerds epics (as "U.N. Jefferson"). Casey's series-TV assignments included the title character (a blue-collar father of five children) in 1979's Harris and Company and the role of baseball coach Ozzie Peoples in Bay City Blues (1983). A ubiquitous TV-movie actor, Bernie Casey was seen in such highly-rated efforts as Brian's Song (1971), Gargoyles (1972) and The Sophisticated Gents (1981).

Trivia: American actor Anthony James has been playing unlovable, unsavory film roles since the late 1960s. James' lean-and-hungry appearance has usually led him to be cast as characters named Skinny (1975's Hearts of the West) or Slim (1992's The Unforgiven). His larger film assignments include Blue Thunder (1982, as Grundeltus) and Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991, as Hector Savage). Anthony James should not be confused with the "Anthony James" who appeared in the 1949 British film Last Days of Dolwyn.

Trivia: Actor Dub Taylor, the personification of grizzled old western characters, has been entertaining viewers for over 60 years. Prior to becoming a movie actor, Taylor played the harmonica and xylophone in vaudeville. He used his ability to make his film debut as the zany Ed Carmichael in Capra's You Can't Take it With You (1938). He next appeared in a small role in the musical Carefree(1938) and then began a long stint as a comical B-western sidekick for some of Hollywood's most enduring cowboy heroes. During the '50s he became a part of The Roy Rogers Show on television. About that time, he also began to branch out and appear in different film genres ranging from comedies, No time for Sergeants (1958) to crime dramas, Crime Wave (1954). He has also played on other TV series such as The Andy Griffith Show and Please Don't Eat the Daisies. One of his most memorable feature film roles was as the man who brought down the outlaws in Bonnie and Clyde. From the late sixties through the nineties Taylor returned to westerns.

Trivia: Karl Swenson was one of the busiest performers in the so-called golden days of network radio. Swenson played the leading role in the seriocomic daily serial Lorenzo Jones, and was also heard on Our Gal Sunday as Lord Henry, the heroine's "wealthy and titled Englishman" husband. He carried over his daytime-drama activities into television, playing Walter Manning in the 1954 video version of radio's Portia Faces Life. From 1958 onward, Swenson was seen in many small roles in a number of big films: Judgment of Nuremberg (1961), How the West Was Won (1962), and The Birds (1963). One of his more sizeable movie assignments was the voice of Merlin in the 1963 Disney animated feature The Sword in the Stone. One of his last roles was the recurring part of Mr. Hansen on TV's Little House on the Prairie. Karl Swenson was married to actress Joan Tompkins.

Trivia: In recalling his courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck recalled the vital contribution of African American actor Bill Walker, who was cast as the Reverend Sikes. "All the black people in the balcony stood," Peck noted. "My two kids didn't. When Bill said to them 'Stand up, children, your father is passing,' he wrapped up the Academy Award for me." The son of a freed slave, Walker began his stage career at a time when black actors were largely confined to shuffling, eye-rolling "Yowzah boss" bit parts. While the harsh economic realities of show business dictated that Walker would occasionally have to take less than prestigious roles as butlers, cooks, valets, and African tribal chieftains, he lobbied long and hard to assure that other actors of his race would be permitted to portray characters with more than a modicum of dignity. He also was a tireless worker in the field of Civil Rights, frequently laying both his career and his life on the line. Walker's Broadway credits included Harlem, The Solid South and Golden Dawn; his film credits were legion. Bill Walker was married to actress Peggy Cartwright, who as a child was one of the stars of the Our Gang silent comedies.

Trivia: Dan Frazer has spent so many years playing police officers and detectives that it's been suggested he should qualify for a departmental pension from the New York Police Department. Most familiar to television audiences for his portrayal of Captain Frank McNeil, the superior to Telly Savalas' Lt. Theo Kojak on the series Kojak, Frazer has also played police officers in dozens of other television shows and movies, although the full range of his work is far more vast, in a career dating back to the late '30s. Born in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York (west and north of Times Square) during the early '20s, Dan Frazer was one of ten children. He was drawn to acting at a relatively early age, and made his professional debut at 14 with the WPA's Federal Theatre Project. Following his appearance in the play Three Steps Down, he was offered a screen test at MGM, but the outbreak of World War II intervened. Frazer served in the army and was fortunate enough to be placed in Special Services, where he got some exposure to theatrical writing and directing. Frazer (whose name was sometimes misspelled in credits as "Don Frazier") resumed his career after the war and made his Broadway debut in the play Christopher Blake; he subsequently appeared in Who Was That Lady I Saw You With, Once More With Feeling, Goodbye Charlie, The Grass Is Always Greener, and A Stone for Danny Fisher. Frazer's television career dates from the end of the 1940s, when he portrayed Louie, the wheelchair-bound chess-playing G.I. in an installment of the 1949 ABC documentary series Crusade in Europe. He appeared on Lux Video Theatre and other anthology shows during the 1950s, and could be seen in episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, The Untouchables, and McHale's Navy. His defining television performance, however, was probably in the Car 54, Where Are You? episode "Change Your Partner" as Chief Bradley, the well-meaning NYPD departmental chief who is flabbergasted by the duration of the successful partnership of patrolmen Toody and Muldoon. During the 1960s, in between appearances on programs such as Route 66, The F.B.I., and My Favorite Martian, and on the few remaining anthology series such as Kraft Suspense Theater, Frazer also moved into motion picture work. He was among the favorite actors of filmmaker Ralph Nelson, playing prominent roles in two of the director's best films, Father Murphy in Lilies of the Field (1963) and Ira Jackson in Tick...tick...tick (1970), as well as his lesser known Counterpoint (1968). Lilies of the Field remains one of the films of which Frazer is proudest, although he has recalled, with some amusement, that United Artists balked at putting up the budget requested by Nelson; almost everyone involved with the film seems to have kicked in something to get it made, but UA's management said that if the film could be re-written as a vehicle for Steve McQueen instead of Sidney Poitier, the distributor would double the proposed budget. Frazer also had prominent roles in George Axelrod's satire Lord Love a Duck (1966), Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971), and a little-known 1972 feature starring Jackie Mason entitled The Stoolie. It was his performance as Lt. Byrnes in the 1972 crime thriller Fuzz, however, that brought Frazer his most visible part -- the producers of the upcoming series Kojak were examining a clip from the movie, looking at the idea of casting another actor as one of the squad room detectives; they rejected the actor they were thinking of but spotted Frazer as the harried squad commander and suddenly realized they had found their Captain Frank McNeil. For the next five years, he was seen weekly in the role of Kojak's superior officer and friend, and became something of a celebrity in his native New York (though the show itself was filmed almost entirely in Hollywood), mentioned in the television gossip pages and interviewed by journalists. His film appearances became relatively infrequent, though they included performances in Cleopatra Jones (1973) and Breakout (1975). Frazer later appeared in the Kojak made-for-television film The Belarus File (1985), and was on As the World Turns from 1989 until 1996 in the recurring role of Dan McClosky. In later years, producer Dick Wolf has used Frazer as a guest star, and the actor, in the seventh decade of his career, completed the trifecta of essaying major guest roles on Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Trivia: Bald, moon-faced character actor George Cisar kept busy in a 22-year Hollywood career with roles in well over 100 film and television productions, starting in 1948 with an uncredited bit as a policeman in Henry Hathaway's Call Northside 777. Perhaps it was his rough-hewn yet genial features, coupled with an unaffected working-class accent and demeanor, but he was frequently put into police uniforms; and, in fact, many baby boomers may instantly recognize Cisar's face, if not his name, for his recurring role as the long-suffering Sgt. Mooney on the series Dennis the Menace, a part he portrayed in over two dozen episodes between 1960 and 1963. He worked in every genre from romantic comedies to Westerns, horror, and science fiction. In 1956 alone, Cisar was a barfly in Fred F. Sears' Teenage Crime Wave; a bartender in Sears' The Werewolf; and the somewhat disingenuous father of a vengeful teenager, who tries to sponsor and then derail a controversial rock & roll show, in Sears' Don't Knock the Rock. Cisar was obviously reliable, as director Sears and producer Sam Katzman -- who made those three movies -- were known for efficient filmmaking on a notoriously low budget.Cisar worked a lot for them at Columbia Pictures (which also produced Dennis the Menace), but he also did a lot of work at Ziv TV, on series such as Highway Patrol and Bat Masterson, in addition to regular appearance in Dragnet, where Jack Webb apparently liked keeping him busy and employed. Cisar could be funny or sinister, and some of his appearances were limited to a single line or two of dialogue, as in The Giant Claw (1957), where he provided a moment of comic relief (indeed, in that movie, his scene was one of the rare intentionally amusing moments). He also turned up in tiny roles in high-profile pictures such as Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Some Came Running (1958). Typically, Cisar would go from a co-starring part in a low-budget exploitation picture, such as Bernard Kowalski's Attack of the Giant Leeches, to a bit in, say, Don Siegel's Edge of Eternity, and then right on to an episode of The Untouchables (all 1959). Cisar retired at the start of the 1970s and passed away in 1979.

Trivia: The son of entertainer Clarence Stroud, Don Stroud made his first film appearance in the 1967 Diabolique clone Games (1967). Handsome and solidly built, Stroud has prospered in meaty second-lead and character roles. Most frequently cast as a short-fused detective, Stroud was seen on television as Sgt. Mike Varrick on Kate Loves a Mystery (1979), as Captain Pat Chambers on Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1984-87) and as Captain Lussen on the 1989 syndicated revival of Dragnet. Don Stroud has remained active into the 1990s, frequently in such instant-videocassette fare as Carnosaur 2 (1995).